Why the feds smashed Megaupload

but if someone wants to be PAID for their hard work they have a right to be compensated and have it protected via copyright. Do you get paid at a job? Why don't you work for free? Seriously. What do you do for a living and why don't you do it for free.

Your argument is moronic. Normal, non-copyrighted works (which most people produce) are paid for only once by a company. You don't get paid every time someone uses the solution you found for them.

I found an issue at my last job that was costing them a lot of money every year. I fixed it. Should I be compensated 10% every year? I'd be living large.

GFY if you're just going to take a moronic stance with reality-oblivious banner-waving.

but if someone wants to be PAID for their hard work they have a right to be compensated and have it protected via copyright. Do you get paid at a job? Why don't you work for free? Seriously. What do you do for a living and why don't you do it for free.

Your argument is moronic. Normal, non-copyrighted works (which most people produce) are paid for only once by a company. You don't get paid every time someone uses the solution you found for them.

I found an issue at my last job that was costing them a lot of money every year. I fixed it. Should I be compensated 10% every year? I'd be living large.

GFY if you're just going to take a moronic stance with reality-oblivious banner-waving.

It's your analogy that's moronic when you compare simple contracted labor with the sale of a legally recognized property that wasn't paid for by anyone when the work was produced.

Wait, so the most pirated movies are the ones that are making a crapload of money?

The point is that the economy went bad, so it would not be surprising if people spent a lot less. And yet profits were soaring. Very odd indeed.

Some industries are more resistant to a bad economy than others. Luxury goods tend to do the worst, while things like movie-going tend to be relatively immune. And it is worth noting that while profits are up (though apparently not in 2011) theatre going audiences are down.

However, what you're trying to get at here is wrong. The point is that the movies that are being pirated the most are the most popular movies, the most well-advertised ones... meaning that, in other words, pirates are most prone to steal that which is percieved as most valuable, rather than for some noble purpose. And most people I know who do this don't go to theaters very often, if at all.

And these are prime movie-going audiences, the target audience for these movies.

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But some things hover on the back of my head.. So personal emails are no longer personal? "They" can have access to personal data like that?

They can look at your emails if:

1) They get a warrant to look at them.

OR

2) They get ahold of them in some way that doesn't require them to have a warrant (they are given to them by someone else, without law enforcement requesting the emails of them - for example, they interact with members of an outside company, someone inside the company sends them the emails, they're investigating someone else and happen across the emails in the natural course of that investigation (such as finding them as files on a server they seized due to something), ect.)

This isn't big brother here, nor is it anything new. It will be interesting to see how they got ahold of the emails, but I rather suspect they either got a warrant (most likely) or because they got ahold of some server with the emails on them (plausible), unless they really were ratted out (also plausible). We'll see.

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This is a senseless, forgone conclusion. Has anyone in the government ever heard of a site called "YouTube"? Check to see how many views there are on a given "Scrubs" clip...I just saw one that had over 5.1 million views, and it was a very brief look. Try Seinfeld, or America's Got Talent, or Britain's Got Talent, or just about any other remotely popular (past or present) show that has ever aired on American television. Are these not copyrighted works? Have you reached the same conclusions about every copyright popular post on YouTube? Because I bet Google (YouTube's owner) has analytics...I've heard them mentioned a time or two, and I bet Google's herd of IP lawyers knows that tv shows are copyrighted works in the same way Nero 10 is. Perhaps a person downloading something is looking for a previous version which is not available any longer on the company's site. Maybe they are looking for a demo. Maybe they can't find their version anywhere else but have a valid license. Maybe their OS doesn't support the latest version of Nero properly, so they are looking for a version which does (not saying it's the case with Nero 10, but easily could be with other software).

They do have analytics, but one problem with the whole "chopped up programs" thing is that it makes it very hard to do checksums on the parts, and, likewise, they don't just go "Oh, this is called Clerks, clearly it is a movie" when there are a lot of other uses of the word "Clerks" and, even if they did prohibit you from uploading something with the name of a movie (which I doubt they'd want to do) you could probably just change the name of the file and still upload it. Indeed, the longer Youtube makes the video limit, the easier it will be for them to police via checksum.

The copyright owners, then, have to police, because I'll wager that while you went looking, you didn't flag any of those videos as copyrighted material, did you?

I might also add that I think there are a few things on Youtube that are in fact copyrighted material which was uploaded by the copyright holder. If you look at the name of the channel usually it will be fairly obvious if it was a random user or someone who is actually the copyright holder (a lot of music videos on YouTube are actually posted by the artists). So its possible that some of the shows you found might be there legally. Most aren't, though, I'm sure.

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This is lunacy. It is an atrocity based on fallacy, which is the same fallacious sort of thinking that was the "reasoning" behind many WWII atrocities committed by Nazis. They had many "reasons" (really, baseless assumptions, bc their hate found what it wanted to find) about certain peoples, and committed many atrocities based on those assumptions. Though this is on a smaller scale, it limits people's freedom who aren't violating the rights of anyone and tramples on a person's "reasonable expectation to privacy" (by having a username/password login, like when you go to do banking online).

How is this an atrocity? Seriously, if you compare something to Nazi freaking Germany, you'd better have a damn good reason. Did they kill anyone? No. Did they set things on fire and blame someone else for it? No.

Warrants specifically allow police to look at things you would normally expect to be private. You do NOT have a reasonable expectation of privacy that protects you from warrants. If they have a warrant, they can look at anything the warrant allows them to.

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I'm not a lawyer yet (just a little longer), but it seems to me that this seems to trample all over the 4th Amendment, where the Supreme Court has ruled numerous times on a person's "reasonable expectation to privacy". I'm pretty sure you could make a compelling case for this, as MegaUpload (and their personal email) required a username and password. Banks use usernames and passwords too, my bet is that in most cases the American courts would be willing to say that you have a "reasonable expectation to privacy" in your banking transactions and affairs. However, this is treated differently bc it pisses the RIAA and MPAA off. Not ironically, the present MPAA chairman is Chris Dodd, the co-author of the Dodd-Frank Bill, a guy who should be in federal prison and knew he would never get re-elected for what he did. Barney Frank is "not seeking re-election" either. This should tell you something about the bill. Anyway, now he's running the MPAA...wonder where he has friends...

If you are in law school, you're not doing a good job of it - you might want to consider changing careers. I doubt you are, however.

The reason is pretty obvious - these guys had all sorts of warrants, and its very possible that the cops got some of this information either via normal gleaning, Megaupload making a mistake, a server being seized for other reasons, or someone ratting them out.

Though I do wonder - if your password became public knowledge, could the cops go rifling through your email account freely until you changed that password? Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you don't change your password, or if your password is either a default password or something else equally obvious (like, say, "password")?

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Your argument is moronic. Normal, non-copyrighted works (which most people produce) are paid for only once by a company. You don't get paid every time someone uses the solution you found for them.

I found an issue at my last job that was costing them a lot of money every year. I fixed it. Should I be compensated 10% every year? I'd be living large.

GFY if you're just going to take a moronic stance with reality-oblivious banner-waving.

Yes you do. That's the entire point of a patent.

Just because you dont' produce valuable IP doesn't mean other people don't.

Your argument is moronic. Normal, non-copyrighted works (which most people produce) are paid for only once by a company. You don't get paid every time someone uses the solution you found for them.

I found an issue at my last job that was costing them a lot of money every year. I fixed it. Should I be compensated 10% every year? I'd be living large.

GFY if you're just going to take a moronic stance with reality-oblivious banner-waving.

Yes you do. That's the entire point of a patent.

Just because you dont' produce valuable IP doesn't mean other people don't.

Patents (except for design patents) don't protect the work, though. They protect the method of making it, which means that if I can reproduce the object (e.g. build a car, or chest of drawers, or a treehouse) with my own skills, tools, and materials, it's totally legal to do (provided I don't infringe on the patent, of course).

The point that you're disagreeing with could be made in a different context as well: nobody expects to pay their neighbors when they sell their house, even if their sale price is higher because the neighbors did a bunch of landscaping and exterior improvements which raised everyone's property values. Not only does nobody expect to pay off the neighbors, I think that most people would violently reject the idea, even though it's a clear instance of benefitting from the creative work of another, without paying them.

If we're serious about the argument that it's only fair to pay the creator every time we benefit from their creative work, then Herr Wankel's heirs should be receiving royalty checks from Mazda, even if Mazda's engines didn't infringe on a single patent of Wankel's (assuming that Wankel patented his engine). Mazda should pay because their engine is very clearly derivative of Wankel's original design, etc.

Alternatively, you could explain why 'intellectual property' should receive this special privilege (payments for life+70 years) while other sorts of property shouldn't get this sort of protection. The principle of paying for benefits that you receive doesn't explain this privilege.

"It's also full of strange non-sequiturs, such as the charge that "on or about November 10, 2011, a member of the Mega Conspiracy made a transfer of $185,000 to further an advertising campaign for Megaupload.com involved a musical recording and a video." So?"

Not a non-sequitor. The facts may help support claims of direct, vicarious and contributory infringement -- in part by showing the availability of copyright protected materials via Megaupload wasn't an accident, but was encouraged -- was, in fact, the purpose of the site, and its means for generating yachts and hookers for Kim.

A distinction should be made between what is illegal, and what *should* be illegal.

Arguably file sharing is a huge improvement -- faster, more energy efficient, and fun. And an entire economy is being built around file sharing -- based on fast Internet access, and cheap 2T drives. So the frustration here is the contractory message society delivers: downloaders are crooks -- and downloading is hugely encouraged by the biggest corporations.

Did Kim know what he was doing was criminal? DUH

But arguably it should NOT be criminal -- in part to avoid the hyprocrisy the current system breeds, which rivals and may exceed the law mockery caused in the 1920s by prohibiting alcohol.

The only losers that matter here are the artists. And they should be compensated -- perhaps by a surcharge on Internet services for heavy downloaders, with the money shared by a copyright pool.

Too bad legislatures are slow to ask the right question: now "how can we criminalize half our society" but "how can we make the current system better for every one"?

but if someone wants to be PAID for their hard work they have a right to be compensated and have it protected via copyright. Do you get paid at a job? Why don't you work for free? Seriously. What do you do for a living and why don't you do it for free.

Your argument is moronic. Normal, non-copyrighted works (which most people produce) are paid for only once by a company. You don't get paid every time someone uses the solution you found for them.

I found an issue at my last job that was costing them a lot of money every year. I fixed it. Should I be compensated 10% every year? I'd be living large.

GFY if you're just going to take a moronic stance with reality-oblivious banner-waving.

It's your analogy that's moronic when you compare simple contracted labor with the sale of a legally recognized property that wasn't paid for by anyone when the work was produced.

It's not my analogy that's moronic. Learn to read what quote I'm responding to before you bother posting more garbage.

The content production industry had a choice to seal their copyrighted material within theaters with exceedingly right security to prevent unauthorized copying.

However, they chose to take advantage of CD, DVD, online streaming, television broadcast technology, knowing full well that there exists no foolproof technology to fully secure content once they are on these channels.

It is a compromise the content production industry took, and they cannot expect people follow their terms. It is ridiculous that they can get the law enforcement to assist them in earning more money.

Just think about it. If you accept Facebook's terms of service but somehow you abused it, what can they do? They can delete your account. That's it. They are not going to send the army down to your house.

"You can never trust us again - never, ever use our servers because you can be subject to USA law even though what you do is not illegal in your own country."

ACTA, SOPA and PIPA is all about digital colonialism - making everybody else in the world conform to USA laws even if the people in that country do not believe in them and have no say in them. I live in the UK and as such am disenfranchised in terms of affecting USA policy and laws (i.e. I cannot vote out a USA Member of Congress). It is also about enforcing the status quo (in terms of protecting USA industries against competition) even if (technologically) the rest of the world is leaving the USA behind.

Undoubtedly there were SOME pirated files on MegaUpload just as there were plenty on non-pirated files on there (I used it to pass Linux ISO images to other people) and personal data. Does that mean that if the USA takes down MegaUpload then the MPAA affiliated companies will sell more films and the RIAA affiliated companies will sell more CDs?

They don't believe that and neither should we. This is all about CONTROL. Big Content effectively have Congress in the palm of their hand. They can name whatever stupid draconian restriction of free speech and computer usage and Congress will pass it - and then force the rest of the world to adopt it.

The answer (of course) is to boycott USA products, music, films and software (especially Microsoft and Apple) - not impossible to do as most electronic goods come from the east and I am typing this on a Chinese (Lenovo) laptop running Linux (from Canonical who are UK based) - and to tell the USA where it can stick its ACTA, SOPA and PIPA legislation.

"You can never trust us again - never, ever use our servers because you can be subject to USA law even though what you do is not illegal in your own country."

Harrumph!

Where exactly is downloading copyright-protected materials without permission legal?

There is little doubt about the illegality, or the fact people know what they're doing is illegal (illegal in the UK too, under UK law, DUH).

If there is USA mania here, it is the same mania that drove Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s -- attempted enforcement of a law that is unenforceable, and that is widely disregarded, and that is bad. Downloading improves our lives (cheaper, faster, more energy efficient) so it should be legalized together with a scheme so artists don't lose out. And that would be easy -- since even under the current scheme most artists get only a tiny cut of the cost of a DVD or music CD.

What makes USA bashing here particuarly misguided is other countries are just as thick headed on this issue. There's no reason the UK (and so on) can't legalize downloading in association with an "ASCAP" scheme -- an Internet license like the TV and Radio licenses that have been paid in the UK for 100 years, with money from the license distributed to artists in reasonable proportion to what gets downloaded.

Verdict first. Trial later. This action is really not defensible. The government should have to prove its case. The mere assertion of guilt is not proof of guilt.

Absolutely!. The abuse of arresting method was way over the top. And "forcing" another country into making the arrest without proper legal due process is clearly an abuse of power. Oh, it is the US Justice Department, they abuse anything they touches period.

just illegalize any motion picture or music recording. that will solve all the problems. or better yet, charge what they used to for cdr dvdr and hard drives. i have a 9GB ide hard drive that i paid $350 to upgrade from a 6GB in my laptop in 2000. today for 100 dollars you can purchase a 1.5TB drive retail. the only reason this stuff exists is due to the price and availability of software and hardware and affordable connectivity to enable and encourage this behavior. i will bet my 2000+ divx rip collection that if we had to pay 530 dollars for a cd burner like when i first purchased mine or the 1000 dollars to buy a dvd burner, then this activity would end immediately, equally if we had to pay 35 dollar a month on top of our 30 dollar phone bill just to dial up to check our email then the sharing of media files would also end as well.

the first time i downloaded a mkv of a bruce lee movie was the same day i GAVE my VHS & DVD collection away that i paid royally for, and the reason is because the quality and convenience of it was greater value than the actual purchased medium that when compared was garbage with its interlaced blurry format.

just make the decision already to charge a freakin premium on any data that is used outside of business and documents. the premium covers all costs to the studio or whoever holds the rights to the intellectual property.

power, computer, internet, google, bit torrent, hard drive, dvd burner, tv. NOT free, and never ours. format the hard drives of the internet and this all goes away immediately. you cannot steal binary code nor can you affect the idea of profits by making a copy of a binary pattern. there is no proof that someone who downloads was ever going to buy that media in the first place so there is no actual loss of revenue, just a claim toward this loss based on the idea that since its available then our low sales are a DIRECT result of what is going on online. NOT TRUE! I have paid 6x for the same movie! plus the times i've paid to see it in the theater and rented and returned the same movie. come on people get your rich sweaty heads out of your ass already and realize that people dont want to pay for something they have never had the right to own. if someone formatted my hard drive right now with all the shared media on it, it would mean jack shit to me or anyone because the same physical device is still here for my use. but if you took someones tv away so that they cannot watch it and gave it to another person who didnt' pay for it to use, that is a different story entirely.

What makes USA bashing here particularly misguided is other countries are just as thick headed on this issue. There's no reason the UK (and so on) can't legalize downloading in association with an "ASCAP" scheme -- an Internet license like the TV and Radio licenses that have been paid in the UK for 100 years, with money from the license distributed to artists in reasonable proportion to what gets downloaded.

That's a wrong-headed, totalitarian approach to a non-problem. What if an Internet user has no interest in downloading copyrighted material? Emulating the UK scheme of paying for a radio and television license, even people who don't use those products or services would still be forced to pay. Now THAT'S unfair. You can only come to such a conclusion because you've been indoctrinated to believe that rights originate with government. In the United States we believe that rights originate with God, and government and its creations (corporations) serve at the pleasure of the citizens.

We're already paying for our Internet connections and we are forced to view an endless barrage of online advertising while using it. Now, under your proposal, we'd be forced to pay for licenses to be plied with all this commercial stuff? Nope, I don't think so!

In the United States we believe that rights originate with God, and government and its creations (corporations) serve at the pleasure of the citizens.

Sorry to nit-pick, but speak for yourself.

Pretty sure he was making a reference:

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In the United States we believe that rights originate with God, and government and its creations (corporations) serve at the pleasure of the citizens.

Sorry to nit-pick, but speak for yourself.

Pretty sure he was making a reference:

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In the United States we believe that rights originate with God, and government and its creations (corporations) serve at the pleasure of the citizens.

BWAHAHAHA. Are you... haha.. are you seriously trying to make us believe that, for instance, the TSA abuse of passengers is a right given by God? That business dictating to government and citizens is a right given by God? Jeez, I've heard about arrogance in my time but buddy.. that takes the cake.

Under what illusion do you think corporations and government in the US serve any anyone's pleasure except their own?? Government are controlled by the corporations - how else do you get laws brought in that only serve corporate interest?

Curious Fellow wrote:

We're already paying for our Internet connections and we are forced to view an endless barrage of online advertising while using it. Now, under your proposal, we'd be forced to pay for licenses to be plied with all this commercial stuff? Nope, I don't think so!

No, under the proposals that THE UNITED STATES wants the rest of the world to abide by; we would effectively be unable to have free trade anywhere. Can you imagine being held liable for laws in Iran? Iraq? How about China? The US companies do what they do in those countries and then go scampering off to the embassy when they get caught. Yet break a US law in a free country then you're in the shiznit!

I'm no fan of piracy, but I think this is going too far. The underlying agenda could easily be one of proscribing on-line publishing by the existing mass media using the facilities of the US government as stooges in the operation.

The point of the ad UMS was complaining about was that individual artists that don't have the backing of RIAA and MPAA affiliate producers can get their art out in front of the public using services like Mega. Now they can't, therefore they won't be competing with those big producers for your pocket change using micro-payment systems like PayPal. Who wins? The artists or the big producers?

In the US at least, this is a First Amendment issue and it needs to be treated like one. We have a Constitution that protects our right to put our words, images and music in the public eye if we want to, and maybe even pick up a few cents on the deal if our customers enjoy our work. Stop the RIAA and the MPAA from taking away your right to listen to those people who would speak to you.

under your proposal, we'd be forced to pay for licenses to be plied with all this commercial stuff? Nope, I don't think so!

And the reality is the Internet isn't broadcast media. The television and radio licenses of yestercentury we're a kludge to begin with; there wasn't a way to know which stations and channels a consumer was really listening to, so they came up with that silly one size fits all scheme in England, then pretended it was a good plan (because, after all, they were British).

The Internet is interactive. We can actually bill people for the content they consume, not the content they *might* consume. It's a non-problem.

under your proposal, we'd be forced to pay for licenses to be plied with all this commercial stuff? Nope, I don't think so!

And the reality is the Internet isn't broadcast media. The television and radio licenses of yestercentury we're a kludge to begin with; there wasn't a way to know which stations and channels a consumer was really listening to, so they came up with that silly one size fits all scheme in England, then pretended it was a good plan (because, after all, they were British).

The Internet is interactive. We can actually bill people for the content they consume, not the content they *might* consume. It's a non-problem.

Except that it is a two way street, and any stream is a download with a playback stacked on top.

Mr Dotcom forgot one cardinal rule about how to deal with the US Government: it is based on organized and legalized bribery (lobbying, PACs etc). Or, as a certain Johnny Chung said it then-famously, (who remembers now, it was in the ancient era of blastfaxing): "'The White House is like a subway: you have to put in coins to open the gates." While Mr Dotcom was giddy buying yet another obscenely expensive toy, the busy bees at MPAA/RIAA were buzzing around the corridors of powers dropping honey in strategic positions.

First thing that comes to mind is of course that all the major networks that control the US government and its intelligence forces via campaign funding and other ways of legal and illegal bribery did something Megaupload didn’t: They openly encouraged users to infringe copyrights as shown by Mike Mozart in his popular video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJIuYgIvKsc and on http://www.filmon.com/cbsyousuck by a famous Hollywood billionaire. Not only did they fund the same file sharing start ups they sued in court, they also offered DRM removal software for DVDs and games so they could be copied. And then threw single moms and students into prison for a few downloads.

and what of Speedyfile? that site also has lots of copyrighted content in it (I use it all the time to upload virtual pinball machines, which are made using copyrighted art and sound files) seems they are safe from this but why are they safe and megaupload is not? because they don't ruffle the feathers of those in power I guess what a bunch of misguided morons to kill what was once a fantastic site! they must have nothing better to do (I guess they ran out of puppies to kick)

The fact that the FBI raided Kim Dotcom's house the day after SOPA was rejected is a coincidence. The raid had nothing to do with U.S. politicians mollifying the RIAA and MPAA after the overwhelming popular rejection of SOPA.

The fact that the FBI raided Kim Dotcom's house the day after SOPA was rejected is a coincidence. The raid had nothing to do with U.S. politicians mollifying the RIAA and MPAA after the overwhelming popular rejection of SOPA.

You are correct. It was intended to be a capstone to the passing of the act, not something to induce laughter after it failed.